Bulls projected to win 32.5 games

[FriedRise]

I found this for last season

https://www.oddsshark.com/nba/chicago-bulls-2025-season-preview-betting-odds


28.5 was the call
there were others right about there

They made some huge changes from the start of the season, . Nobody would have tried to claim that replacing Caruso, DeRozan, Drummond and eventually Lavine with Duarte, Giddey, Smith and eventually Jones, Huerter and Collins was the plan to get from 28.5 to 39 but there's a reason they play the games in the NBA

So look like a fool and believe what you like

I know it's a different year and all, but kinda funny that their prediction was a lot lower with Zach here than this year's iteration with mostly young role players.

[Stratmaster]

If the Vegas line balances out both sides of over/under betting, then it is probably a highly accurate gauge of a team's standing at that time. "The wisdom of the crowds" has proven time and again to be about as accurate a tool for prediction as you can find, even when every member of the crowd has their own biases, I love the story of how a statistician discovered the wisdom to be found from a crowd's consensus (this taken from Wikipedia):

The classic wisdom-of-the-crowds finding involves point estimation of a continuous quantity. At a 1906 country fair in Plymouth, 800 people participated in a contest to estimate the weight of a slaughtered and dressed ox. Statistician Francis Galton observed that the median guess, 1207 pounds, was accurate within 1% of the true weight of 1198 pounds. This has contributed to the insight in cognitive science that a crowd's individual judgments can be modeled as a probability distribution of responses with the median centered near the true value of the quantity to be estimated.

To be fair, if the crowd is overflowing with individuals who have the same direction of bias, then the crowd won't seem so wise after all.

Estimating the static weight of an object or being right in front of you. It is nothing like predicting the future. Show me objective proof that a group of that size, with no special training in the subject matter, accurately predicts the end of season record for a baseball, basketball or other sports team and we can talk. You and others keep making this claim about Vegas odds, and I have shown that claim to be factually incorrect with numbers and facts.

[Stratmaster]

No. It is saying exactly what I said. As things always do if people don't reword other's statements to insinuate they meant something other than what they said. Something most married people are still learning after decades together.

1. The intention of the betting line is not to be an accurate predictor of the outcome. That right there should tell you not to use it for any after the fact analysis, or as any type of indicator.

The intention of the betting line is very close to being an accurate predictor of the expectations based on known information though. After reality hits, we then look at what happened between expectations and reality and try to figure out the difference.

2. #1 is supported by the facts and numbers which, to use your words, are "wildly inaccurate".

Not sure what you mean really, not sure it matters, but I agree, no one can predict sports futures with great accuracy.

3. If one of those look-backs is Billy Donovan is a great coach because he beat Vegas projections by 10 games over 5 years, and all of those games came at the end of one season playing tanking teams, that look-back is lazy and unsupported.

I don't think being above vegas expectations proves anything about Donovan FWIW, but I think it makes the case harder to say he stinks if the team is better than you expect every year. Not to say they are better than your expectations. My belief from our exchanges is that you think a lot more of the talent on this team over the past five years than I do. Our variance in opinion might be largely also about our variance in expectations.

I would put much more stock in an analysis by an experienced party who has NBA experience behind them (e.g. scout, former coach, etc.) who had taken the time to analyze all the off-season moves, direction of each franchise, etc.

I think the expert opinions on Donovan seem to generally be quite positive, if we're just talking about that.

Adding on to this, for purposes of this discussion, whether Vegas odds ultimately end up being accurate is sort of beside the point. Strat's assertion was that the Bulls should have generally been a winning team under Donovan's tenure. The bolded above gets to the heart of the issue. Strat has the opinion he has, but my point was that his opinion is at odds with the general consensus on the Bulls. Whether or not they are accurate, Vegas odds are a good metric of pre-season expectations for a given team. Vegas has not viewed the Bulls as a a likely winning team. Vegas has been right about that. I would also say that Vegas has generally been in line with NBA media as well, when making their pre-season predictions. I would note I have seen exactly zero predictions or media analyses saying something to the effect of "this team has a lot of talent, but Billy Donovan is holding them back, and that's why I think they'll miss the playoffs." So what this boils down to is Strat simply having an outlier opinion about the strength of the roster over the last several years. Which is fine! But it's outlier opinion nonetheless.

Donovan Rankings. These are in order that I received them from a simple Google search:

Sam Quinn, CBS Sports puts him here:
25. Chauncey Billups, Trail Blazers
24. Billy Donovan, Bulls
23. JB Bickerstaff, Pistons
22. Doc Rivers, Bucks

Clay Burnett, The Big Lead, Ranked him 19th
Harris Ahmadza, The New Arena, ranked him 24th
Pro Football and Sports ranked him 19th

Fadeaway World grouped them by classification. His category was "Hot Seats" and included:
Willie Green, Chauncey Billups, Will Hardy, Mike Brown, Darko Rajakovic, Jordi Fernandez, Billy Donovan, Charles Lee, Brian Keefe

I can not find an ESPN ranking.

The fact that Bulls fans and media have fallen in love with Billy's charm doesn't mean a damned thing. I can't find anyone ranking him higher than 19th in the league, although I am sure they are out there.

Again, people seem to think that what their perception of something is; even their perception of someone else's perception, is reality.

[econprof]

If the Vegas line balances out both sides of over/under betting, then it is probably a highly accurate gauge of a team's standing at that time. "The wisdom of the crowds" has proven time and again to be about as accurate a tool for prediction as you can find, even when every member of the crowd has their own biases, I love the story of how a statistician discovered the wisdom to be found from a crowd's consensus (this taken from Wikipedia):

The classic wisdom-of-the-crowds finding involves point estimation of a continuous quantity. At a 1906 country fair in Plymouth, 800 people participated in a contest to estimate the weight of a slaughtered and dressed ox. Statistician Francis Galton observed that the median guess, 1207 pounds, was accurate within 1% of the true weight of 1198 pounds. This has contributed to the insight in cognitive science that a crowd's individual judgments can be modeled as a probability distribution of responses with the median centered near the true value of the quantity to be estimated.

To be fair, if the crowd is overflowing with individuals who have the same direction of bias, then the crowd won't seem so wise after all.

Estimating the static weight of an object or being right in front of you. It is nothing like predicting the future. Show me objective proof that a group of that size, with no special training in the subject matter, accurately predicts the end of season record for a baseball, basketball or other sports team and we can talk. You and others keep making this claim about Vegas odds, and I have shown that claim to be factually incorrect with numbers and facts.

There is an enormous literature in statistics on the wisdom of the crowds applying in a wide range of situations. The stock market, election prediction markets, sales projections, and yes, counting gumballs, are all good examples, For a nice readable overview of this literature, and the mathematical underpinnings of the phenomenon, check out the book Proof by Adam Kucharski.

I will repeat what I said earlier: if the crowd is overflowing with individuals who have the same direction of bias (say fans of a college team filling a Vegas sports book), the crowd won't seem so wise. But that is an arbitrage opportunity waiting to be exploited.

[jnrjr79]

The intention of the betting line is very close to being an accurate predictor of the expectations based on known information though. After reality hits, we then look at what happened between expectations and reality and try to figure out the difference.



Not sure what you mean really, not sure it matters, but I agree, no one can predict sports futures with great accuracy.



I don't think being above vegas expectations proves anything about Donovan FWIW, but I think it makes the case harder to say he stinks if the team is better than you expect every year. Not to say they are better than your expectations. My belief from our exchanges is that you think a lot more of the talent on this team over the past five years than I do. Our variance in opinion might be largely also about our variance in expectations.



I think the expert opinions on Donovan seem to generally be quite positive, if we're just talking about that.

Adding on to this, for purposes of this discussion, whether Vegas odds ultimately end up being accurate is sort of beside the point. Strat's assertion was that the Bulls should have generally been a winning team under Donovan's tenure. The bolded above gets to the heart of the issue. Strat has the opinion he has, but my point was that his opinion is at odds with the general consensus on the Bulls. Whether or not they are accurate, Vegas odds are a good metric of pre-season expectations for a given team. Vegas has not viewed the Bulls as a a likely winning team. Vegas has been right about that. I would also say that Vegas has generally been in line with NBA media as well, when making their pre-season predictions. I would note I have seen exactly zero predictions or media analyses saying something to the effect of "this team has a lot of talent, but Billy Donovan is holding them back, and that's why I think they'll miss the playoffs." So what this boils down to is Strat simply having an outlier opinion about the strength of the roster over the last several years. Which is fine! But it's outlier opinion nonetheless.

Donovan Rankings. These are in order that I received them from a simple Google search:

Sam Quinn, CBS Sports puts him here:
25. Chauncey Billups, Trail Blazers
24. Billy Donovan, Bulls
23. JB Bickerstaff, Pistons
22. Doc Rivers, Bucks

Clay Burnett, The Big Lead, Ranked him 19th
Harris Ahmadza, The New Arena, ranked him 24th
Pro Football and Sports ranked him 19th

Fadeaway World grouped them by classification. His category was "Hot Seats" and included:
Willie Green, Chauncey Billups, Will Hardy, Mike Brown, Darko Rajakovic, Jordi Fernandez, Billy Donovan, Charles Lee, Brian Keefe

I can not find an ESPN ranking.

The fact that Bulls fans and media have fallen in love with Billy's charm doesn't mean a damned thing. I can't find anyone ranking him higher than 19th in the league, although I am sure they are out there.

Again, people seem to think that what their perception of something is; even their perception of someone else's perception, is reality.

Aside from the fact that I have never heard of a single one of these authors, what do Google search results for NBA coach rankings have to do with whether Vegas odds are broadly reflective of the general consensus of an NBA team's roster? Did any of these no-name power rankers opine that Billy had had a material negative impact on the Bulls' record?

The bolded sentence is legitimately pretty funny in the context of this conversation. Pretty much the definition of projection.

[meekrab]

I found this for last season

https://www.oddsshark.com/nba/chicago-bulls-2025-season-preview-betting-odds


28.5 was the call
there were others right about there

They made some huge changes from the start of the season, . Nobody would have tried to claim that replacing Caruso, DeRozan, Drummond and eventually Lavine with Duarte, Giddey, Smith and eventually Jones, Huerter and Collins was the plan to get from 28.5 to 39 but there's a reason they play the games in the NBA

So look like a fool and believe what you like

I know it's a different year and all, but kinda funny that their prediction was a lot lower with Zach here than this year's iteration with mostly young role players.

That site got 4 out of 15 eastern conference over / unders correct this year. You'd go bankrupt betting their advice.

[Stratmaster]

Adding on to this, for purposes of this discussion, whether Vegas odds ultimately end up being accurate is sort of beside the point. Strat's assertion was that the Bulls should have generally been a winning team under Donovan's tenure. The bolded above gets to the heart of the issue. Strat has the opinion he has, but my point was that his opinion is at odds with the general consensus on the Bulls. Whether or not they are accurate, Vegas odds are a good metric of pre-season expectations for a given team. Vegas has not viewed the Bulls as a a likely winning team. Vegas has been right about that. I would also say that Vegas has generally been in line with NBA media as well, when making their pre-season predictions. I would note I have seen exactly zero predictions or media analyses saying something to the effect of "this team has a lot of talent, but Billy Donovan is holding them back, and that's why I think they'll miss the playoffs." So what this boils down to is Strat simply having an outlier opinion about the strength of the roster over the last several years. Which is fine! But it's outlier opinion nonetheless.

Donovan Rankings. These are in order that I received them from a simple Google search:

Sam Quinn, CBS Sports puts him here:
25. Chauncey Billups, Trail Blazers
24. Billy Donovan, Bulls
23. JB Bickerstaff, Pistons
22. Doc Rivers, Bucks

Clay Burnett, The Big Lead, Ranked him 19th
Harris Ahmadza, The New Arena, ranked him 24th
Pro Football and Sports ranked him 19th

Fadeaway World grouped them by classification. His category was "Hot Seats" and included:
Willie Green, Chauncey Billups, Will Hardy, Mike Brown, Darko Rajakovic, Jordi Fernandez, Billy Donovan, Charles Lee, Brian Keefe

I can not find an ESPN ranking.

The fact that Bulls fans and media have fallen in love with Billy's charm doesn't mean a damned thing. I can't find anyone ranking him higher than 19th in the league, although I am sure they are out there.

Again, people seem to think that what their perception of something is; even their perception of someone else's perception, is reality.

Aside from the fact that I have never heard of a single one of these authors, what do Google search results for NBA coach rankings have to do with whether Vegas odds are broadly reflective of the general consensus of an NBA team's roster? Did any of these no-name power rankers opine that Billy had had a material negative impact on the Bulls' record?

The bolded sentence is legitimately pretty funny in the context of this conversation. Pretty much the definition of projection.

You said my opinion on Donovan was at odds with general consensus. I showed you it isn't. You dismissed my sources, but like every other post you have made you offer nothing to support your opinions or criticism of mine. Step up or go away.

[Stratmaster]

If the Vegas line balances out both sides of over/under betting, then it is probably a highly accurate gauge of a team's standing at that time. "The wisdom of the crowds" has proven time and again to be about as accurate a tool for prediction as you can find, even when every member of the crowd has their own biases, I love the story of how a statistician discovered the wisdom to be found from a crowd's consensus (this taken from Wikipedia):

The classic wisdom-of-the-crowds finding involves point estimation of a continuous quantity. At a 1906 country fair in Plymouth, 800 people participated in a contest to estimate the weight of a slaughtered and dressed ox. Statistician Francis Galton observed that the median guess, 1207 pounds, was accurate within 1% of the true weight of 1198 pounds. This has contributed to the insight in cognitive science that a crowd's individual judgments can be modeled as a probability distribution of responses with the median centered near the true value of the quantity to be estimated.

To be fair, if the crowd is overflowing with individuals who have the same direction of bias, then the crowd won't seem so wise after all.

Estimating the static weight of an object or being right in front of you. It is nothing like predicting the future. Show me objective proof that a group of that size, with no special training in the subject matter, accurately predicts the end of season record for a baseball, basketball or other sports team and we can talk. You and others keep making this claim about Vegas odds, and I have shown that claim to be factually incorrect with numbers and facts.

There is an enormous literature in statistics on the wisdom of the crowds applying in a wide range of situations. The stock market, election prediction markets, sales projections, and yes, counting gumballs, are all good examples, For a nice readable overview of this literature, and the mathematical underpinnings of the phenomenon, check out the book Proof by Adam Kucharski.

I will repeat what I said earlier: if the crowd is overflowing with individuals who have the same direction of bias (say fans of a college team filling a Vegas sports book), the crowd won't seem so wise. But that is an arbitrage opportunity waiting to be exploited.

I will repeat what I said earlier. I did a 3 year analysis with a 15 team (50%) sample size that proves that pre-season Vegas odds do not in any way correlate with end of season results. Or as another poster who was somewhat debating me put it, "they are wildly inaccurate". When you have some literature showing me how crowds are accurately predicting future events let me know. I mean stocks and elections only make sense because those aren't predictions, those are statements of preference. Obviously the more people who buy a stock the better it will perform. That's kind of a direct cause and effective. And the more people who prefer (and vote for) a candidate the more likely that candidate will win.

[jnrjr79]

Donovan Rankings. These are in order that I received them from a simple Google search:

Sam Quinn, CBS Sports puts him here:
25. Chauncey Billups, Trail Blazers
24. Billy Donovan, Bulls
23. JB Bickerstaff, Pistons
22. Doc Rivers, Bucks

Clay Burnett, The Big Lead, Ranked him 19th
Harris Ahmadza, The New Arena, ranked him 24th
Pro Football and Sports ranked him 19th

Fadeaway World grouped them by classification. His category was "Hot Seats" and included:
Willie Green, Chauncey Billups, Will Hardy, Mike Brown, Darko Rajakovic, Jordi Fernandez, Billy Donovan, Charles Lee, Brian Keefe

I can not find an ESPN ranking.

The fact that Bulls fans and media have fallen in love with Billy's charm doesn't mean a damned thing. I can't find anyone ranking him higher than 19th in the league, although I am sure they are out there.

Again, people seem to think that what their perception of something is; even their perception of someone else's perception, is reality.

Aside from the fact that I have never heard of a single one of these authors, what do Google search results for NBA coach rankings have to do with whether Vegas odds are broadly reflective of the general consensus of an NBA team's roster? Did any of these no-name power rankers opine that Billy had had a material negative impact on the Bulls' record?

The bolded sentence is legitimately pretty funny in the context of this conversation. Pretty much the definition of projection.

You said my opinion on Donovan was at odds with general consensus. I showed you it isn't. You dismissed my sources, but like every other post you have made you offer nothing to support your opinions or criticism of mine. Step up or go away.

Put it this way: Billy Donovan is in the Hall of Fame and the best basketball journalist on the planet just described him as a good coach who the Bulls should not fire because they would very likely cycle through a bunch of worse options. You cited a few unknown internet power rankers who placed him in the lower half of the league, but a power ranking of coaches isn't like a power ranking of teams, which is a concept you seem to be missing here in your analysis. The 20th best coach in the NBA is in all likelihood still a good basketball coach, because it's not zero-sum like it would be if you were ranking NBA teams. It's more akin to what a ranking of players would be, if anything. The 20th best basketball player is going to be a really good basketball player. And aside from that, I think you have to sort of inherently understand that anyone writing clickbait-y coaching rankings is just churning internet slop. It's telling you couldn't find any generated by any basketball journalists of good repute, because it's not the sort of thing credible ones would likely engage in. Part of it, too, is that much of a coach's work is totally invisible to fans. You can see Xs and Os stuff, rotations, etc., but at least half the job is unknown to the viewer. I assume that's why you don't see the big names in basketball journalism trying to do these sorts of rankings.

Not that I think this is worth anything, but if you Google "is Billy Donovan a good basketball coach," the AI generated answer is "Billy Donovan is generally considered a good, though not elite, basketball coach." I think that's pretty much the consensus.

One other small nugget - when Donovan was hired by the Bulls, I remember Zach LaVine was on some sort of streaming platform (Twitch, maybe?) and he found out while streaming that Donovan was hired. He was stoked. If Donovan wasn't generally viewed as a good coach around the league, why did Zach react that way?

I find it funny that I'm jumping to his defense, because I am in no way married to Billy Donovan having a lifetime appointment as coach of the Chicago Bulls. My opinion is just that he is in no way a significant problem (if he's even a problem at all), and as I've described it before, firing him is just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. If the Bulls unexpectedly let him go, I wouldn't be mad, because I view it mostly as a move that's not going to matter much one way or the other. NBA coaches tend to have a pretty limited impact on wins and losses. The absolutely elite ones and the absolutely terrible ones seem to have more of a difference, but most are just not all that determinative of outcomes. Even someone like Pop, who is one of the greatest coaches ever to live, didn't turn San Antonio's sub-par roster into a playoff team. Most people view Spoelstra is an elite coach, but he's had a lot of totally mid Heat teams, because you simply can't coach a bad team into a good one.

IMO, given what a clownshow this ownership group and management are/have been, the Bulls are fairly lucky that Billy Donovan wants the gig at all. I think he'd pretty clearly have another head coaching gig if the Bulls let him go, and obviously the Knicks tried to go after him this past season. Though I guess take that for what it's worth, because though the Knicks are a very good team, they tend to be pretty wacky when it comes to cycling through coaches.

[Stratmaster]

Aside from the fact that I have never heard of a single one of these authors, what do Google search results for NBA coach rankings have to do with whether Vegas odds are broadly reflective of the general consensus of an NBA team's roster? Did any of these no-name power rankers opine that Billy had had a material negative impact on the Bulls' record?

The bolded sentence is legitimately pretty funny in the context of this conversation. Pretty much the definition of projection.

You said my opinion on Donovan was at odds with general consensus. I showed you it isn't. You dismissed my sources, but like every other post you have made you offer nothing to support your opinions or criticism of mine. Step up or go away.

Put it this way: Billy Donovan is in the Hall of Fame and the best basketball journalist on the planet just described him as a good coach who the Bulls should not fire because they would very likely cycle through a bunch of worse options. You cited a few unknown internet power rankers who placed him in the lower half of the league, but a power ranking of coaches isn't like a power ranking of teams, which is a concept you seem to be missing here in your analysis. The 20th best coach in the NBA is in all likelihood still a good basketball coach, because it's not zero-sum like it would be if you were ranking NBA teams. It's more akin to what a ranking of players would be, if anything. The 20th best basketball player is going to be a really good basketball player. And aside from that, I think you have to sort of inherently understand that anyone writing clickbait-y coaching rankings is just churning internet slop. It's telling you couldn't find any generated by any basketball journalists of good repute, because it's not the sort of thing credible ones would likely engage in. Part of it, too, is that much of a coach's work is totally invisible to fans. You can see Xs and Os stuff, rotations, etc., but at least half the job is unknown to the viewer. I assume that's why you don't see the big names in basketball journalism trying to do these sorts of rankings.

Not that I think this is worth anything, but if you Google "is Billy Donovan a good basketball coach," the AI generated answer is "Billy Donovan is generally considered a good, though not elite, basketball coach." I think that's pretty much the consensus.

One other small nugget - when Donovan was hired by the Bulls, I remember Zach LaVine was on some sort of streaming platform (Twitch, maybe?) and he found out while streaming that Donovan was hired. He was stoked. If Donovan wasn't generally viewed as a good coach around the league, why did Zach react that way?

I find it funny that I'm jumping to his defense, because I am in no way married to Billy Donovan having a lifetime appointment as coach of the Chicago Bulls. My opinion is just that he is in no way a significant problem (if he's even a problem at all), and as I've described it before, firing him is just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. If the Bulls unexpectedly let him go, I wouldn't be mad, because I view it mostly as a move that's not going to matter much one way or the other. NBA coaches tend to have a pretty limited impact on wins and losses. The absolutely elite ones and the absolutely terrible ones seem to have more of a difference, but most are just not all that determinative of outcomes. Even someone like Pop, who is one of the greatest coaches ever to live, didn't turn San Antonio's sub-par roster into a playoff team. Most people view Spoelstra is an elite coach, but he's had a lot of totally mid Heat teams, because you simply can't coach a bad team into a good one.

IMO, given what a clownshow this ownership group and management are/have been, the Bulls are fairly lucky that Billy Donovan wants the gig at all. I think he'd pretty clearly have another head coaching gig if the Bulls let him go, and obviously the Knicks tried to go after him this past season. Though I guess take that for what it's worth, because though the Knicks are a very good team, they tend to be pretty wacky when it comes to cycling through coaches.

The Chicago Bulls are the only team that would not have moved on from Billy by now. Instead they gave him 2 extensions. Decisions that didn't even need to be made.

And FFS of course Billy is a good basketball coach when speaking of the general population. Of course every damned NBA coach is a good coach. And Patrick Williams is a damned good basketball player. C we are soaking in relative terms. About the NBA. And about Chicago one of the biggest sports markets in the world. Duh

[kodo]

Bill Simmons and Zach Lowe also thought 32 was way too low. Didn't think the Bulls were a good team, but should have been mid to high 30s just like every other year because we're going to go for that play-in.

"To them 40-42 is 62-20."

[MrSparkle]

It’s beyond pathetic if you can’t win 33 games while “trying.”

With the depth chart AK assembled, and Billy’s determination to compete and do things “right,” I’d say 35W is the floor. There will be 5 terrible teams tanking, so there are your 20 or so wins.

39W is a safe bet. Although Collins going down for the first month may throw a curve-ball.

[rosenthall]

It’s beyond pathetic if you can’t win 33 games while “trying.”

With the depth chart AK assembled, and Billy’s determination to compete and do things “right,” I’d say 35W is the floor. There will be 5 terrible teams tanking, so there are your 20 or so wins.

39W is a safe bet. Although Collins going down for the first month may throw a curve-ball.

I agree that Vegas is under-estimating the Bulls for the simple reason that we're not trying to tank. If the play-in is your super bowl there's no reason you can't get to at least 35 wins. FWIW most of the lines have moved up to 34 wins, so apparently there's been a mini-consensus that we're better than that.

Losing Collins hurts a little, but at 20 MPG I'm not sure the difference between him and Smith is that large. I think losing Coby or Matas hurts the most IMO.

[NZB2323]

I told my Uncle to bet the over. 33 wins isn’t a lot, we won 39 last year, we’ll face some teams who are injured or resting stars, we’ll have games where we hit a bunch of 3s, we’ll have games where the opponent misses a bunch of 3s, and we finished the year strong with a young, developing group.

If it was 42.5 I’d tell him to bet the under.

[Ice Man]

This is an interesting test, because while usually it's Bulls fans who are saying to take the over (they always do), with this year it's also a bunch of outside analysts, including Simmons, Lowe, and Hollinger.

But somewhere, some place, half the money has been placed on the under. I mean, that's how betting markets work.

[dougthonus]

I know it's a different year and all, but kinda funny that their prediction was a lot lower with Zach here than this year's iteration with mostly young role players.

Part of that was Zach ended the previous year playing god awful and demanding a trade and then hurt. There were questions of whether he would bounce back, make up with the front office, be a cancer, etc...

[DuckIII]

It’s beyond pathetic if you can’t win 33 games while “trying.”

It certainly is for a GM.

[League Circles]

I think the binary notion of a team "trying" vs "not trying" is very oversimplified. IMO, most teams are trying most of the time.

[Stratmaster]

I think the binary notion of a team "trying" vs "not trying" is very oversimplified. IMO, most teams are trying most of the time.

I agree that the players, when they hit the court, are not purposely "not trying". But the organization, through roster moves, player rotations, handling of injuries, handling of rest schedules for players, etc... are definitely, at times, not trying to win. We have all been watching basketball long enough that this is pretty evident.

[sco]

I think the binary notion of a team "trying" vs "not trying" is very oversimplified. IMO, most teams are trying most of the time.

I agree that the players, when they hit the court, are not purposely "not trying". But the organization, through roster moves, player rotations, handling of injuries, handling of rest schedules for players, etc... are definitely, at times, not trying to win. We have all been watching basketball long enough that this is pretty evident.

Yeah, players play hard, but teams decide to focus on giving minutes to developing players (e.g. tank).